1*^ 


m 


Tip^dl^^ 


iliTTTillBiil T ' 




ACES TOR 
INDUSTRY 



BYRUFUS SIEEUE 




i 



Class. 
BooL 



hfL 



'S% 



Goipg!itl\'^ 



COFflMCHT DEPOSIT. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 



BY 



RUFUS STEELE 




BOSTON AND NEW TORE 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

THE RIVERSIDE PRESS CAMBBIDUE 

1919 






COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THB CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY RUFUS STEELE 

ALL RIGHTS RUSKRVBD 



j.O O 

mi 21 ISI9 

©CI.A535832 



ta— 



^ ACES FOR INDUSTRY 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 



THE war was over — six months 
over. So far as might be gath- 
ered from the dozen men who 
faced each other alertly across a 
mahogany table the war was for- 
gotten. Their thoughts were busy 
with the newer chapter long and 
loosely heralded as the war after 
the war. Big men of American in- 
dustry they were, picking earnestly 
at a puzzle. There could be no 
doubt that they had been fore- 
warned, but they were met in 
frank confession that not one of 
them was satisfactorily forearmed. 
"I'm willing to be pitied,'' 
boomed Shetling, "but not to be 
blamed." 



4 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

Shelling, on whom the impromptu 
chairmanship seemed naturally to 
descend, was a grizzled giant, an an- 
imated symbol of the stanch roll- 
ing-mill machines that had made 
his company a reputation round 
the world. 

"We have all been up to the 
neck in getting out government 
orders with mighty little time to 
get ready for to-morrow,'' he eluci- 
dated. "Besides, we didn't know 
how to get ready." 

"You've said it," declared Bur- 
ford, far down the table — bald, 
bearded Burford, whose big plant 
had ceased to spout pleasure cars 
in order to emit a flood of ambu- 
lances and machine guns. "We 
could n't plan to meet to-day's 
demands when nobody but an Old 
Testament prophet could have 
given us the least idea what the 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 5 

blue-prints and specifications would 
be like." 

"Well, we Ve got the order sheet 
now," snapped Everson, a rubber 
man, "'but I'd hate to think 
any kind-hearted old prophet ever 
framed us like this!" When a laugh 
had subsided he went on: "De- 
mand is colossal. Our own country 
is short on reserve stocks of every 
kind. Europe is needing everything 
we can send to get her back on her 
feet. Foreign credits are as in- 
definite as X in algebra. But we 
can leave payment puzzles to the 
bankers. How are we going to pro- 
duce? I want to know. We can't 
get enough labor, and when we do 
get it it won't do the work." 

"Labor's a jack-in-the-box shot 
out to the end of its spring!" cried 
a leather manufacturer. "Labor 
has got to be sat on until it folds 



6 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

back into place. Can't go on till 
then." 

"'Even then/' exclaimed the 
leather man's nearest neighbor, 
"we won't have workers enough." 

Four men made simultaneous 
endeavor to add their wisdom to 
the symposium, but the voice and 
presence of Rowlands, a king-pin 
in the hardware world, claimed the 
attention of the dozen. 

"The point is, gentlemen" — 
Rowlands spoke with judicial de- 
liberation — "we have all the work- 
ers we are going to get. Ameri- 
can industry has got to do the big- 
gest job in the history of the world 
with the tools it has in hand. I 
promised Shetling I 'd bring to this 
informal meeting a man — an en- 
gineer who is something besides an 
engineer — who could tell us how 
to do the only thing left us — who 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 7 

could tell us how to sharpen our 
tools/' 

"And I told Rowlands I did n't 
believe his prodigy could shed any 
real light/' boomed Shetling from 
the end of the table, "but to bring 
him along. Is your little tool sharp- 
ener on tap, Mr. Rowlands.?" 

The tall hardware manufacturer 
rose deliberately and left the room. 
He returned presently, followed by 
a shorter, stockier man, who car- 
ried a roll of charts as though it 
were a baton and himself as erectly 
as though he were about to rap an 
orchestra to attention. 

" Gentlemen," Rowlands ad- 
dressed them, "this is Haliburton. 
I have told him you are a difficult 
audience. If you are ready to listen 
he will tell his own story." 

"We welcome Mr. Haliburton," 
rumbled the impromptu chairman. 



8 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

"Let him tell it in thirty min- 
utes.'' 

The newcomer laid his charts on 
the table and stepped behind an 
unoccupied chair. 

"'The identity and standing of 
my hearers are known to me/' he 
began in even tones. "On most 
subjects it would be far better for 
me to listen than to talk. If my 
ideas and proposals appear bold, 
please remember they have at base 
some solid concrete of experience." 

The speaker was immediately 
impressive. He was a man well past 
his youth who retained youth's 
vigor. He looked through lenses 
that magnified his comprehending 
gray eyes. His expression — the 
precise mustache itself — bespoke 
practiced powers of evaluation. 
"Engineer" was written across his 
face. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 9 

"Wars have a way of leaving us 
in serious industrial diflSculties," 
Haliburton declared as he meas- 
ured one countenance after an- 
other. "The last big one did. Some 
of you can remember the slump 
that followed the Civil War. After 
four years in uniform men seemed 
to have forgotten most of the cun- 
ning with tools that had made 
them great artisans. Many never 
returned to the factories at all. Sud- 
denly came an unprecedented de- 
mand for shop products, and for a 
time it seemed that the country 
must fail to meet its splendid trade 
opportunity. The call was for highly 
skilled men, and of skilled men 
there were not one fourth enough. 
Since the days of the ancient guilds 
there had never appeared to be 
such a lack of workers whose hands 
and brains were trained by years 



10 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

of apprenticeship to do exacting 
mechanical work. 

"The situation was met in the 
only possible way. Invention met 
it. Machinery came. Machinery 
leaped into a period of undreamed- 
of development. The United States 
manufactured everything required 
of it because machine tenders could 
be obtained. Machine tenders, it 
was held, needed no long or careful 
training. As machinery reached an 
ever-higher stage of development, 
apprentice training, as practiced 
for a thousand years, went wholly 
out of fashion. It would never be 
needed again, men said. Factory 
workers now had only to pull 
levers and feed in the raw material. 
Brains and skill were no longer a 
necessity. Am I not right, Mr. 
Shetling?" 

"Right enough," agreed the 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 11 

chairman. ''The brains were in the 
machines/' 

"The accepted theory." Hali- 
burton thanked him with a nod. 
"American manufacturers agreed 
that the machinery possessed about 
all the brains needed when they 
beheld output vastly greater and 
less expensive than it had ever 
been. Wages went up, but so did 
profits. Machine production could 
take care of both. We became a 
great manufacturing nation. Then 
the world war! And now the post- 
war difficulties once more. Destiny 
is calling us to be industrial world 
leaders in a way no one could 
ever have predicted. With sky-high 
wages and a limited number of 
workers, how are we to attain un- 
limited production.?" 

The speaker paused. Burford 
gave him an answer. 



12 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

"I surmise/' said the automo- 
bile maker, "that you have draw- 
ings in the bundle there for some 
new breed of machinery that can 
operate itself." 

"Alas, no," Haliburton corrected. 
"A man will have to go on operat- 
ing the machine, and the machine 
has about reached the limit of re- 
finement." 

"Then I don't see much hope for 
us," interposed Burford. 

"But I do!" cried Haliburton, 
his face suddenly alight. "I see un- 
limited hope. That 's why I 'm here. 
I see an opportunity we should 
have noted without a world war to 
wake us up to it. We've about ex- 
hausted the development possibili- 
ties of the machine, but we have n't 
even begun on the development 
possibilities of the man." 

Armchairs grated the table with 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 13 

the sudden movements of their oc- 
cupants. Dissent was in the general 
mumble. 

" I '11 give you my conclusions first 
and my premises afterward/' Hali- 
burton drove on. ^'America's indus- 
trial man power is the most capable 
and the least developed in existence. 

"The potentially greatest arti- 
san has been lost for a generation 
and a half because few understood 
what he could and should be. Now 
we are going to attend to his devel- 
opment. Refining him will multi- 
ply production and be our answer 
to the world." 

"I don't believe it!" boomed the 
giant at the head of the table. "I 
don't believe your remedy is any 
good. Which American worker is go- 
ing to let you sift your development 
powder down his obstinate throat ? " 

"The young one!" shouted Hal- 



14 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

iburton. "I know what I'm talking 
about. I'll stick to experience. I'll 
give you facts and figures. I '11 show 
you how developing the producing 
agent multiplies the product. I'll 
tell you about a developing system 
that shows how the American arti- 
san refines into the wonder-worker 
of the industrial world. When you 
see what has been done in one huge 
plant you must see what might be 
done in all." 

''You've got twenty-five minutes 
left" — Shetling hunched down 
comfortably in his chair — ''to sell 
a dozen men who don't believe in 
miracles." 

"I'll try to touch only the high 
points," Haliburton resumed, "but 
I wish — I wish I could go into the 
human side of it so you could see 
just how we found out the truth for 
ourselves." 



II 

In 1902 the Universal plant at 
Westville, Massachusetts, was 
turning out some of the highest- 
priced motors in the market. The 
price was high^ because the cost 
was. The production manager was 
unhappy. He ranged up and down 
through the processes of manufac- 
ture and tried at every stage to put 
his finger on the flaw. His success 
was not notable. Nothing was ir- 
regular. All he could do was to 
curse the luck. He did this with 
such vigor that the oflSces heard 
him and so did the shops. Presently 
Haliburton heard. Like a man 
awaiting a signal he headed for the 
administration building. 

"Every machine on motor work 
turning over regularly,'' the pro- 
duction manager was explaining to 



16 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

the general manager, "yet some- 
thing is lacking." 

"Three things lacking/' amended 
the voice of the young man who 
had entered unannounced. 

The oflBcials did not resent the 
intrusion of Alexander Haliburton. 
He was an American who had car- 
ried oflf honors in European engi- 
neering schools and had then done 
the more unusual thing of carrying 
off honors in European plants. Of- 
ficially he was in charge of draft- 
ing and designing. UnoflScially he 
seemed to have an eye for every- 
thing between the yard gate and 
the distant back fence. His sug- 
gestions had a way of getting them- 
selves adopted. 

''Three things lacking.? What 
are you talking about?" Thus the 
general manager admitted the new- 
comer to the discussion. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 17 

"Industrial intelligence, skill, and 
loyalty." 

*' Interesting if true," commented 
the G. M. " How can we get them? " 

"Only one way to do it," Hali- 
burton assured: "we must breed 
them in. Let me start my appren- 
tice school to-day." 

The production manager scoffed. 
The G. M. laughed and said : " Same 
answer as last time. Appropria- 
tions for human experiments are 
still lacking." 

Haliburton was not to be thus 
forestalled. 

"I'm ready to go ahead without 
an appropriation," he announced. 
"Give me one of those vacant 
rooms over my drafting depart- 
ment and let me pick ten boys out 
of the shops." 

The G. M. studied his man and 
evinced the quality of decision that 



18 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

had made him head of the plant. 
" Go to it/' he said. 

Hahburton returned to his own 
department and walked among a 
score of men bending over their 
drafting tables. The sharp features 
of Charley Trigger were buried in 
his work and he was chuckling to 
himself, which meant that a brand- 
new design of the highest quality 
was growing under his hand. 

"' Charley, would you like to help 
me develop industrial intelHgence 
in a bunch of boys who will some 
day run this plant .'^^ 

The face that Trigger raised ra- 
diated a genial magnetism." What 's 
industrial intelligence? " he queried. 

"The mental ability to grasp the 
whole process while working on 
any one of its parts." 

"Oh, boss! When do we start?'' 

Haliburton began at the one 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 19 

point where he could begin without 
money and without price — at the 
scrap-heap. Under his direction 
Trigger and ten eager youngsters 
whom he had called away from 
the tool shop and the die shop, 
dragged out ten discarded ma- 
chines that were awaiting the junk- 
man and moved them to the room 
above the drafting department. 
After much tinkering one old lathe 
took fresh heart and answered its 
levers. It was saddled with the job 
of building the others back to fit- 
ness. When the almost miraculous 
rejuvenation had been accom- 
plished, Haliburton stood once 
more before the general manager. 

"We've got nine lathes, shapers, 
and grinders and one drill press 
going,'' he said. "Give me an order 
for raw material for all the small 
pulleys the plant will need in the 
next six months." 



20 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

Thus the school began to pay 
something back from the first day 
of operation. Two weeks later, the 
production manager exclaimed to 
the G. M. in the presence of the 
school's head: "I'm up against it! 
Got to have two thousand small 
steel shafts for motors immediately, 
and the lathes are too busy to get 
them out." 

"Mine are not," suggested Hal- 
iburton. 

" Yours .'^^ The production man- 
ager fixed him with a puzzled 
glance. "What do you mean.?" 

"The apprentice school, of 
course." 

"Don't kid a worried man. Do 
you think I want all my raw stock 
ruined and my motors held up by 
your bunch of kids? Why talk 
about things that can't be done.'^" 

Haliburton held out appealing 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 21 

hands to the G. M. The G. M. 
looked from one man to the other, 
then gestured with his cigar. The 
gesture meant that the apprentice 
school would get its try at the little 
steel shafts, 

"In Heaven's name, Halibur- 
ton,'' cried the outraged production 
manager, "how are you going to 
cover me on this?'' 

"If we fall down," the head of 
the school promised, "I'll cover 
you with a silk hat." 

Some days ahead of the stipu- 
lated time a specimen of shining 
headgear was purchased — by the 
production manager for Halibur- 
ton's own use. Two thousand little 
steel shafts, perfect in form and 
finish, had come out of the rum- 
bling room above the draftsmen and 
designers. The general manager 
honored the apprentice school with 



82 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

his first visit just as the boys were 
romping out at the close of the day. 
He had one of the Httle shafts in 
his hand. 

*^I just dropped in," said the 
G. M., curiously embarrassed, "to 
ask what were the three things you 
said we lacked in this plant.'' 

" Industrial intelligence, skill, and 
loyalty," Haliburton repeated. 

"And that is what you and 
Trigger are doing in your school, is 
it — teaching these things.?" The 
G. M. did not appear to be fol- 
lowing his usual method of di- 
rectly expressing what was in his 
thought. 

"We are teaching the first two." 

"You aren't teaching loyalty 
then.?" 

"You can't teach loyalty; you 
have to inspire it. What was it you 
really came to talk about?" 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 23 

" Why — why — hang it all ! 
Aleck, you ' ve shot me full of holes 
with your little motor shafts, and 
you know it. They aren't boys' 
work — at least this plant never 
saw such work from its boys before. 
Just what are you up to and just 
what is it IVe got to give you to 
put it through?'' 

Haliburton swallowed his excite- 
ment and pushed the G. M.'s gen- 
erous bulk into the only armchair 
that had found place among the 
groups of resurrected presses and 
lathes, 

^ "Apprentice training in this 
country has been pretty sad busi- 
jiess ever since plants got to be- 
lieving machinery could do the 
work," he began. "Where they 
bother at all to put the apprentice 
tool-maker, pattern-maker, or me- 
chanic through the four years that 



24 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

make him a member of his craft, it 
is done about Hke this: In the first 
year he sweeps the floor and wipes 
machines; in the second year he is 
allowed to run a drilling machine, 
set up work in the lathe and do 
a little bench work; in the third 
year he gets vise, bench, and floor 
practice and learns about milling 
machines, precision measurements, 
and automatic set-ups ; in the fourth 
year he goes on with these same 
things and learns to read blue- 
prints and drawings. Then he gets 
through, and what does he really 
know? Not very much! He has 
n't had any proper foundation — 
has n't learned to think in indus- 
trial terms. Why, even most fore- 
men begin to stutter when they see 
a little bunch of fractions, and 
most superintendents can't turn 
out a mechanical drawing any more 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 25 

than they can turn out an oil paint- 
ing of Niagara/' 

"The machinery does most of 
the thinking," cut in the G. M. 

"The biggest lie ever told!" 
shouted Haliburton. "Iron does n't 
do any more thinking when it is 
harnessed and writhing in a ma- 
chine than when it lay as undis- 
covered ore in the ground. Is n't 
the most refined machinery you 
can think of just a sublime sort of 
monkey wrench to put into an in- 
telligent hand? Help me train that 
hand." 

"Help how.?" 

"Help me set up an apprentice 
course that shall be a trade school 
and training-room combined, one 
that shall teach industry's highest 
principles in industry's very at- 
mosphere. The foremen will tell 
you most of our boys ran away from 



26 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

school to get into the plant be- 
cause school was just drudgery to 
them. We'll show them a school 
they'll be crazy to attend. We'll 
knock the notion that they are 
simply having knowledge poured 
in, by paying them as much an 
hour while they are in the school- 
room as when they are turning out 
usable pieces in the training shop. 
We'll give boys the fun of their 
lives while they are mastering 
mathematics, physics, technology, 
and mechanical drawing. We '11 put 
up a job on them. We'll let them 
believe we are simply turning them 
into crackajack mechanics, pat- 
tern-makers, molders, and instru- 
ment makers, with never an ink- 
ling that they can hardly avoid 
becoming masters, foremen, super- 
intendents, and managers. We '11 lay 
the foundation of industrial leader- 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 27 

ship and give them an outlook, and 
then let Nature take its course/' 

Alexander Haliburton was talk- 
ing the things that had formed in 
the breast of one with whom in- 
dustry was the great passion. He 
looked out the window of the now 
silent room awhile, then said in a 
quieter tone: 

"We must not go on in this 
country wasting people. No nation 
can ever know true greatness until 
it learns superior conservation of 
the human factor in production. 
Let's begin to do something with 
the most promising raw material 
in existence — the kind that can 
think. We've got millions of autom- 
atons following along in the worn 
wasteful ruts; what do you say to 
developing a few polished produ- 
cers who may add something to the 
standards of civilization?" 



28 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

The G. M. worked himself out 
of the clutch of his chair. It was 
a little uncertain whether several 
staccato squeaks emanated from 
straining chair rungs or from his 
own straining throat. When he had 
got to his feet he said nothing at all. 
He merely bobbed his head in a 
way that was plainly and vigor- 
ously aflBrmative, and went out, 
carrying with him a perfect little 
steel shaft that would find its place 
not in a motor but in the treasure ■' 

drawer of the G. M/s office safe. 



Ill 

ScoTTY, gangling, half-formed, 
nearing seventeen, came along 
when the school had been running 
four years. Haliburton and Charley 
Trigger, looking through the glass 
wall of the latter's oflfice, saw the 
boy swinging up the training-room. 
Trigger was superintendent of the 
school now. Haliburton, with vast 
engineering responsibilities in the 
expanding plant, found time to 
drop in every day. The school was 
still the apple of his eye. 

"Small-town boy?'' asked Hali- 
burton. 

"Yes," Trigger answered. "I 
give the small-towner the prefer- 
ence because he nearly always 
makes good, though I don't know 
why he should." 

"I've figured it," said the en- 



30 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

gineer. "The small-town boy has 
neither the unconscious inertness of 
many farm lads nor the over-as- 
surance of the city boy. He realizes 
that about everything worth while 
lies outside his town. If he has the 
strength to turn his back on the 
clerkship in the village grocery he 
is good material for us." 

Haliburton fell back and watched 
while Trigger completed the enroll- 
ment of Scotty, which had begun 
by mail. The graduate manager of 
the training floor was leading the 
newcomer away when the superin- 
tendent recalled him. 

"One more question. Do you 
dance?" 

The small-town boy stared at 
him hard and shook his head. 

"Better learn," the superintend- 
ent suggested. "It will help you 
with those legs." 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 31 

"Gee," cried the boy, "then I'll 
have to forget my church raising 
and go to it!'' 

Scotty found himself on a grinder. 
Another boy was there to show 
him how to do simple shaft work — 
how to grind down straight little 
parts for a turbine. At the outset 
the strain was terrible, but after 
two hours Scotty was able to look 
up long enough to see that he was 
far from being alone. More than 
one hundred boys worked in cou- 
ples at machines of different kinds. 
Lordy , what a world ! He spat on 
the floor as an expression of exu- 
berance. The other boy was call- 
ing him back to the job, the other 
boy who handled the little shafts 
with such bewildering facility. 
And then Scotty learned that the 
other fellow had been as igno- 
rant as he three days before. His 



82 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

spirits rose. Trigger was to dash 
them. 

"Got a parlor in your home?'' 
The superintendent had paused 
beside him. , 

"Yes, sir; a daisy.'' 
"Nice carpet* and everything?" 
"Yes, and a piano." 
"Ever spit on that carpet?" 
"No, sir; of course not." 
"We haven't any carpet here," 
said the superintendent, "but this 
big room is our parlor just the 
same." 

Scotty was crushed. Three days 
later he had revived. He was spend- 
ing his mornings under a more 
advanced boy in learning to cut 
threads, and his afternoons in 
teaching a brand-new boy to do 
simple shaft work. He had caught 
the first great idea of the school. 
He was boy pupil and boy teacher 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 83 

too. Everything he was taught he 
was to make his own by teaching 
it immediately to somebody else. 

Scotty had learned other things 
besides machine processes in the 
three days. He had learned that 
his grammar-school graduation cer- 
tificate, which he had regarded 
as meaning much the same as a 
certificate of vaccination from the 
family doctor, was his most pre- 
cious possession. Without it he 
never could have entered this 
wonderful world of the apprentice 
school. He would have to go over 
a lot of the mathematics he had 
had, to get a better foundation 
for more mathematics he had never 
had. But just the same the appren- 
tice school, with all its patience, 
had no time to spend on boys who 
had not finished the grammar 
grades. In two months he would 



34 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

begin to spend an hour and a half 
a day in the classrooms. He even 
looked forward with eagerness to 
this, for of course it would not be 
like school. How could it be when a 
fellow would get his eighteen cents 
an hour just the same? In the 
sudden revolution of his thought 
Scotty even wished he had a high- 
school diploma too, for that would 
let a fellow into the engineering 
course, and an engineer appar- 
ently was the greatest man in the 
world. 

Here was Scotty, least among 
several hundred boys who knew 
more than he did, yet with an in- 
dividuality. He did not guess it; he 
could not have guessed it; but the 
circumstances rubbed it in. When 
he moved along from planer to press, 
a card bearing his name went with 
him and slipped into the card 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 35 

holder on the new machine. More 
glorious still, Mr, Haliburton him- 
self, on his frequent rounds, stopped 
and talked with him. By name! 
This was inexpressibly stimulating 
to one who had never once seen 
Haliburton glance toward the name 
card, who had observed that the 
great man was nearsighted, and 
who knew nothing at all of the 
magnifying powers of a proper 
lens. 

In two weeks Scotty knew what 
a chuck was; in six weeks he could 
tell whether a Jacob chuck or an 
Almond chuck was to be used, and 
why. Hammer and chisel were once 
definite terms to him, but not now. 
Ball peen, cross peen, and straight 
peen were members of the hammer 
family of which he spoke with ac- 
curacy, and he did not ask for a 
chisel without specifying whether he 



36 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

meant cold, diamond point, or cape. 
And common tools had changed as 
much in function as in name. 
He no longer picked them up as 
crutches, but as means to an end. 
Then Trigger called Scotty and 
three other boys who had entered 
the school on the same day he did 
into the glass-walled office. ^ 

"Go home, you fellows,'' the su- 
perintendent said to two of them. 
"You mean well, but it isn't in 
you to handle tools. Be lawyers or 
something." And to Scotty and 
the other he said: "You two man- 
age to get by. Here are your ap- 
prentice papers ready for signing 
if you are sure you want to stick 
for four years." 

"How do you know we'll be any 
good in the classroom.?" Scotty 
asked respectfully. 

"Because boys who are good in 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 37 

the training-room always are/' was 
Trigger's reply. 

Scotty set his rambling signature 
to the document, which specified 
that he should serve the appren- 
tice school faithfully and that the 
apprentice school faithfully should 
serve him. 

"You understand this contract 
to be legally binding on the appren- 
tice, do you.?'' the superintendent 
asked. 

Scotty drew a solemn breath. 
"I do," he replied. 

" Well, it is not ! " denied Trigger. 
"It would n't hold you ten seconds 
in any court. We are going to do 
everything in our power for you not 
because of any law but solely and 
simply because we have your word 
that you will do the right thing." 

Thus was Scotty bound. En- 
tirely apart from the fact that 



38 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

every tentacle of inclination was 
anchoring his soul to this grand 
undertaking he knew he would 
never allow himself to vary one 
hair's breadth from the pact, for a 
twenty-million-dollar corporation 
was banking on his word! 

In another month Scotty longed 
for a few days off so that he might 
hurry back to Jordan's Corners 
and halt the outrage being carried 
on in the grammar school in the 
name of mathematics. He had tol- 
erated fractions and decimals as 
taught out there because at that 
stage of his youth he knew no bet- 
ter; but why in the name of Sam 
Hill could n't they have let a fellow 
know what fractions and decimals 
were really about — how they 
would help you figure the right 
size of everything in the world you 
wanted to make! 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 39 

And was n't it bully to have 
school-teachers who could skin out 
of their coats and do anything in 
the plant! The classroom work 
linked to the practice of the train- 
ing-room had whisked the bushel 
off the candle of education and sent 
Scotty's nose into his arithmetic in 
a way that would have set his 
mother frantic with alarm. An hour 
and a half a day he spent in the 
classroom, and across the back of 
his arithmetic he glimpsed geome- 
try, trigonometry, and elementary 
electricity as shining worlds held 
squarely in the path of his con- 
quering feet. 

Trigger came to him in the train- 
ing-room when he was working a 
lathe to produce a steel circlet in 
accordance with a pattern. 

"What you making.?'' the super- 
intendent wanted to know. 



40 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

*^A turbine ring." 

"What is a turbine?" 

"It's a motor, but I never saw 
one." 

"Like to see one? I just happen 
to be going over to the turbine shop 
now." 

"Oh, say, Mr. Trigger!" 

The superintendent led him 
down the three jflights of stairs, 
across the yard and into a building 
a thousand feet long. For an hour 
— it might have been a year for all 
Scotty knew — the one inducted 
the other into the mysteries of big 
and little steam turbines. They 
came out with the boy in some- 
thing of a daze. 

"Honest," he asked, "do you 
think I can ever learn enough to do 
what those men in there are doing?" 

"I would n't dare make a guess." 
The superintendent rubbed his chin 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 41 

thoughtfully. "But we'll help you, 
and you keep on seeing the thing 
as straight as you can while you 
study and work/' 

Haliburton was waiting in the 
office. 

"Been over shooting a little 
vision into the boy Scotty,'' the 
superintendent explained. 
^ "How does he get it, Charley?" 
asked the engineer with unfeigned 
solicitude. 

"Like a poet. I'm not going to 
be satisfied with a common crack- 
ajack out of this piece of material," 
answered Trigger in unblushing 
contradiction of his very recent 
remark to the boy; "I'm looking 
for a star." 



IV 

Stars, it appears, must be forged 
and tempered. There were certain 
little flaws in Scotty that forced 
Trigger to burrow persistently into 
the boy, and sometimes when the 
superintendent was weary, to doubt 
for a moment the quality of the 
material. For one thing, Scotty 
was slow to see the importance of 
the thorough mastery of interme- 
diate steps, too eager to see pieces 
of metal begin to take on the ulti- 
mate shape. Trigger got at this 
by doubling the boy back again 
and again over things he hated to 
do. Scotty, mad as hornets, shut 
his mouth and obediently followed 
the order. Trigger himself learned 
several things while machining the 
bump of overeagerness out of his 
pupil. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 43 

The superintendent was to get 
his first jolt about the boy near the 
end of his first year in the school. 
It was the more unexpected be- 
cause recent examinations had 
shown that Scotty's progress was 
increasingly thorough. Here was 
his name suddenly appearing four 
times on the delinquent list for a 
single week. The list was drawn for 
purposes of the pay roll from the 
time clock on which the appren- 
tices registered their coming and 
going. On Tuesday, said the record, 
Scotty had not rung in until nearly 
noon. He had done as badly on 
Wednesday. There was nothing to 
show that on the following two 
days he had returned to the school 
after the noon recess. The usual 
footnotes on delinquents recorded 
the night watchman's statement 
that the boy had been hanging 



44 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

round a couple of evenings until 
put out at ten o'clock. 

Trigger was sad. He remembered 
that Scotty had come to him on 
Monday when boring holes in the 
bearing of a grinder and said he 
needed a reamer so that the holes 
might be set in with absolute ac- 
curacy. The answer given the boy 
was that a reamer could; not be had 
on account of the cost. It would 
cost sixty dollars. Had the denial 
of his request made the boy sul- 
len or reckless? Or what was the 
explanation of his strange course? 
The boy must be brought up with 
a sharp turn and then investi- 
gated. 

The superintendent was about 
to go out and set the machinery of 
discipline in motion when Hali- 
burton came in. He was smiling 
like a new father. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 45 

"Every time I find some real 
evidence that we are developing 
initiative on the part of the boys/' 
he exclaimed, "I feel that this 
school is paying dividends on all 
the sweat and patience it takes to 
run it." 

"Tell me your good story and 
I'll tell you my bad one," sug- 
gested Trigger. 

"I'll try to make you forget 
yours," Haliburton promised, ig- 
noring the proffered chair. "Com- 
ing down the training-room just 
now I found the boy Scotty work- 
ing on a job that did not look like 
anything you would give a first- 
year man. I asked what he was 
doing. He said he needed a reamer 
pretty badly, so he had dug up a 
chunk of steel and was making one 
on his own time. My voice seemed 
to get lost for a minute, but luckily 



46 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

I found it in time to tell him I had 
intended adding a new reamer to 
the equipment and that you would 
hand him sixty dollars as soon as 
he had his in operation/' 

In the classroom course for ma- 
chinists, tool and die makers, 
Scotty advanced upon power trans- 
mission, chemistry of common 
metals, and mechanical and free- 
hand drawing with the same de- 
termination that he used in master- 
ing one lathe after another. Every 
six months his rating raised and 
his pay per hour increased. The 
day came when he knew he was no 
bumpkin any longer; he stood well 
in the eyes of the other apprentices 
too; but Trigger felt that the boy 
was slow to measure himself against 
the world that lay outside the 
school. Trigger expressed his feel- 
ing to Haliburton, and that in- 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 47 

genious developer of human ma- 
terial began to plan an experi- 
ment of the kind that delighted his 
soul. 

Scotty was encouraged into an 
extraordinary affection for tur- 
bines. He taxed the equipment of 
the training-room in producing 
many of the parts. He longed to be 
shaping the remaining parts and to 
see all go together in readiness to 
function. Was it ever possible, he 
wondered, in a conversation with 
Trigger, for a fellow to be assigned 
for a few days to straight work over 
in that magical zone known as the 
turbine shop.? The kind superin- 
tendent agreed to use his influence. 

The lad was assigned as helper 
to Beaney Johnson. Old Beaney 
knew his business from A to Z. He 
had been machining steam tur- 
bines forever — that was what he 



48 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

told Scotty. He was glad to get 
hold of a boy from Haliburton's 
parlor nursery so he could learn 
him something practical. Scotty, 
dumb with admiration and with the 
thrill of j contact with regular pro- 
duction, gazed on the hairy arms 
of his new master as on the capable 
shapers of a imiverse. 

They were working on steam- 
expansion nozzles — cutting ex- 
panding holes through a thick 
circle of steel called the nozzle 
head. Beaney directed the boy to 
set up the head in the drill press, 
and when this had been done with 
nimble preciseness he ordered: 

*'Now, kid, stand aside and 
watch with all the eyes in your 
head. You '11 see the hole come, but 
whether you see anything more or 
not all depends. Some boys git onto 
what's happening and some never 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 49 

could in a thousand years. Some 
might even be able to tell all about 
how it is done but never could 
learn to tackle the job themselves. 
Whether you'll ever be able to do 
it depends on how hard you watch 
now and how good a man you are 
when you grow up.'' 

The hole must have a sharp 
slant. Beaney made a horizontal 
attack upon the metal, and when 
the drill had bit in he stopped 
the machine and reset the drill to 
the correct slant as nearly as he 
could figure it, and then starting 
up once more he drove through 
the band. 

''I guess you saw it all, but it 
was too deep for you," Beaney said 
as he examined the hole. 

Scotty nodded but said nothing. 
He was disappointed with himself. 
He had not expected the thing to 



50 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

puzzle him, but it did. He swung 
the nozzle head round for the next 
hole when Beaney commanded, 
and watched as before. He was 
still denied the thrill of compre- 
hension. Beaney seemed to derive a 
certain pleasure from the boy's con- 
tinued bewilderment and scolded 
and twitted him by turns as the 
morning wore along. At length the 
perplexity within Scotty articu- 
lated itself in a question. 

^^Mr. Johnson," he asked, "is n't 
there some way of drilling the 
slanting hole with a single oper- 
ation instead of having to stop 
and reset the drill and make two 
operations of it.?" 

Old Beaney let go the drill to 
look him over with infinite scorn, 
"What kind of nerve food does 
this Haliburton feed you up there," 
he demanded, "that makes you 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 51 

waste your time wondering if a 
man who was doing this before 
you was born knows his trade?" 

By mid-afternoon Scotty was in 
a frame of mind that frightened 
him. He was still bowing in defer- 
ence to every act of this old master 
of the craft, yet some imp rose up 
within him and kept whispering 
that the drilling should be simpli- 
fied by one half and that Johnson's 
method of figuring the slant was so 
inaccurate that it was outrageous. 
He held his tongue in his teeth for 
hours, but at last the imp managed 
to jerk it loose. 

" Say now,'' he blurted, " let 's fig- 
ure that slant to a one thousandth 
of an inch and find a way to drill 
the hole through at a single clip!" 

The old journeyman contracted 
like a porcupine and then expanded 
in a shower of vituperative quills 



52 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 



that were intended to perforate 
his youthful helper past all power 
to make a further insulting sug- 
gestion. But the helper was not 
perforated. He was merely set to 
smarting beyond all desire to sleep. 
He spent half the night at a lathe 
in the apprentice school beveling 
little triangular blocks of steel. 

When Beaney Johnson ambled 
into the turbine shop next morning 
with the deliberate movements of 
an old grizzly bear Scotty was al- 
ready present. That was not all. 
The helper had presumed to set 
up a nozzle head in the drill press 
without waiting for the command, 
and above the place indicated for 
the first slanting hole he had 
clamped a beveled steel block, 
thus presenting a horizontal sur- 
face to the drill. 

"Throw that fool thing off the 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 53 

machine!'" roared the outraged old 
machinist, as he looked from the 
nozzle head to the boy. 

"Start the drill; she's all set," 
said Scotty in reply. 

Beaney pushed back his sleeves, 
crooked his fingers, and advanced 
threateningly toward his helper. 
Scotty's face went very white, but 
he did not offer to throw the piece 
off the machine and he did not re- 
treat. He picked up a hammer and 
indicated that he would use it to 
supplement his physical disadvan- 
tage. Beaney hesitated. 

"Aw, watch now. Watch just 
once!" the boy pleaded. 

Scotty set the drill to spinning. 
It bit into the metal. When it 
should have stopped in order to be 
given the slant it went on. It was 
already aslant. The old machinist 
saw, and his mouth went open like 



64 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

that of a fish. He forgot everything 
but the wonder. As for Scotty, he 
went on driUing away, and the 
growing hole in the nozzle head 
was as nothing to a growing hole 
in his consciousness through which 
the light of understanding was 
flooding his soul. More and more 
clearly an immutable truth stood 
revealed. Knowledge, he was per- 
ceiving, is power. 

It was knowledge that had 
stripped him ribbed and rounded 
out of the husks of adolescence. It 
was knowledge that had anchored 
his feet to the ground when an 
angry mountain of muscle was ad- 
vancing upon him. It was knowl- 
edge that had enabled an appren- 
tice to make conquest of a veteran 
of the shops — of an old giant who 
in all his blustering years had never 
enjoyed any measure of vision and 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 55 

accuracy in his undertakings or any 
measure of assurance in his fam- 
ished and longing soul. 

Scotty, a craftsman among 
craftsmen, pulled the drill clear of 
the perfect new hole. There was a 
moment's pause and then the great 
hairy arms of Beaney Johnson 
reached over and swung the steel 
band round to where another bev- 
eled block was clamped in readi- 
ness for the second shot. The 
foreman of turbines, an instructed 
witness, went skipping to head- 
quarters and reeled off the story. 

" It 's in him ! " squeaked Trigger, 
wrapping gleeful arms about him- 
self. '^I've known it a year!" 

"An industrial executive,'' said 
Haliburton, "has been born." 

While the superintendent and 
the foreman chattered the man 
out of whose vision the apprentice 



66 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

school had come sat looking out the 
window with unseeing eyes. For 
the moment he was permitting 
himself the luxury of dreams. An 
engineer who could make spiritual 
appraisals, he surveyed the future, 
and then and there foresaw things 
which the inevitable years did 
bring to pass. He saw this appren- 
tice finishing the machinists' course 
and eagerly going in for the two 
years' course that would enable 
him to set down the things he was 
thinking with a draftsman's sure 
line and curve. He saw him rise in 
a day to foreman of a shop after he 
had given logical arrangement to 
the tools of that shop and caused 
the cost of production to tumble. 
He saw him while still under thirty 
as superintendent of a modest 
plant, a definite and potential fig- 
ure in industry, superbly justifying 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 67 

his training, and drawing his five 
thousand dollars a year. 

''I never told you, chief/' Trigger 
broke the reverie, "but once old 
Scotty confessed to me why he was 
a week getting here after we had 
sent word he could have his try at 
the school. It seems there was a 
vacant clerkship in the village 
grocery and Scotty's mother and 
a couple of long-whiskered uncles 
came mighty near hanging the lob- 
ster sign on him for life/' 



V 

All one spring the school was 
under surveillance by a pair of 
brown eyes peering out through a 
dust-covered pane in the foundry. 
Larry Lukens, the watcher, fol- 
lowed the coming and going of the 
apprentices with a natural yearn- 
ing to know what wonders were 
being unfolded on the top floor of 
the grim red building to those boys 
of his own age. Upon the spark of 
his eagerness husky Dave Womble, 
with the seasoned wisdom of one 
who had put in eight years in the 
foundry, dashed the quenching 
waters of suspicion. 

"You forget those boobs, Larry,'' 
Dave would admonish. "They 
don't even know they 're just being 
hammered by the company into 
tools to bust the union." 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 59 

"But listen, Dave/' Larry would 
say, loath to give up his cheerful 
fancies; ''all the wonderful things 
they are being taught up there, if 
they can only get over being wrong 
about the union, ought to make 
them all-fired good men at their 
trade.'' 

''Boy, you listen to me," Dave 
would end and clinch the argument: 
"I'm a molder and I know. The 
only thing for a fellow in a plant is 
to get himself slammed onto the 
best job possible and then to stay 
put." 

Of course Dave Womble knew. 
He was more than mentor to the 
fatherless boy. He could remember 
when Larry was born in the house 
next door — he was getting ready 
to celebrate his own ninth birth- 
day at the time. He had been 
climbing monkeylike in the steel 



60 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

frame of the new business block 
the day Larry's father had lost 
his footing in reaching too far out 
for a tossed rivet and had been 
carried home silent and still. Dave 
had told Larry he ought not to live 
off his mother's needle forever, and 
the day after the boy graduated 
from the grammar school he had 
led him to the foundry. A good- 
natured foreman looking into the 
frank eager eyes had scrawled the 
lad's name on the pay roll and told 
him he was now apprentice and 
helper to Dave. 

Dave Womble worked in sand. 
While he fingered and considered 
the wooden pattern, Larry would 
fetch the two empty frames, which, 
in spite of appearances, Dave as- 
sured him were the cope and bot- 
tom of a flask, and Larry would 
shovel sand into the frames while 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 61 

Dave poked and jabbed and 
smashed with his wooden tamper 
until a firm if brittle mold had 
formed about the pattern. It was 
in making the simple cores that the 
boy's spirits rose. Dave never 
deigned to lay hand on anything 
as puny as a core box; thus the job 
was Larry's own, 

"You make good hard cores, 
kid," Dave complimented him. 
"You could shoot a hole through a 
elephant with one and have it still 
true on the edges. If you quit ruin- 
ing your eyes rubbering through 
that dirty window at Haliburton's 
boobs some day you'll be a molder 
like me. But remember, sand 's 
your bread and butter now, and 
you want to cut out the dream- 
mg. 

So Larry watched through his 
clouded pane, envying and pitying 



62 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

those boys between whom and 
himself was a great gulf fixed. 

"Go up to the pattern room on 
the top floor of this building/' 
Womble commanded one day, "' and 
ask old Washburn to give you the 
core box for this new motor head/' 

The boy climbed the three flights, 
got what he was sent for and came 
back to the head of the stairs. He 
glanced out through an open ven- 
tilator, and the core box almost fell 
out of his grasp. He found himself 
gazing across a few rods of space 
into the wide windows of a new 
world. This world was filled with 
all the kinds of marvelous ma- 
chines and big and little tools 
that one dreamed of sometime or 
other knowing how to use. But that 
was not the best part. The new 
world was peopled entirely by 
boys — boys of his own age and a 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 63 

little older — who moved about 
with joy and airy freedom, making 
the machines hum and go, and 
giving no sign whatever that they 
were being cramped and hammered 
into tools to bust the union ! 

Young Christopher Columbus 
kept his discovery to himself. In 
the weeks following he told Dave 
that he had heard this and that of 
the things that went on in the ap- 
prentice school — he was repeat- 
ing what he had seen through the 
ventilator in precious stolen mo- 
ments on the fourth jQioor — and 
the husky molder tamped the sand 
viciously and assured him that one 
and all these things were lies. Thus 
the chain by which Dave Womble 
held the youngster wore thin in 
one iron link. 

One day Charley Trigger, en- 
grossed and detained in laying out 



64 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

the work for to-morrow, stumbled 
down the school stairs in the twi- 
light an hour or two after the plant 
workers had stampeded out the 
gate. Outside the door a boy lying 
in wait plucked his sleeve. 

*'Why is it, please, Mr. Trigger, 
you use the wonderful school just to 
train up boys to break the union?" 

The lad's voice shook; there was 
no doubt that he was going straight 
to the bottom of something that 
was agitating his soul. Trigger 
studied his strange questioner hard. 

"We don't.'' The superintendent 
laid a sure hand on one well-de- 
veloped young shoulder. "We train 
up boys and urge them to go into 
the imion. With the knowledge 
and skill they acquire in the school 
they can do wonders to make the 
union strong and helpful and fine/* 

"Honest to God?" 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 65 

Trigger rested his other hand on 
the other shoulder. 

" Yes, honest to God," he repKed. 

"Then, Mr, Trigger, how — 
how does a boy begin to do some- 
thing to get in?'' 

Larry Lukens had completed his 
enrollment in the apprentice school 
before he dared breathe a word of 
it to Dave. Then he got it all out 
in a sentence: 

"I'm in the apprentice school, 
Dave; going to spend four years 
there and learn to be a cracka- 
jack tool-maker, and then come 
out to be head of the union or 
bust." 

But Dave could not get it so fast 
as that, and as the boy gave the 
news to him in bits he accepted 
each as a fagot to fire his powder 
barrel in a fresh place. 

"The rotten, lying schemers!" 



66 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

he exploded. "To think they could 
slip you out from under my nose 
and me having never a chance to 
save you from signing your liberty 
away! I'll get all the men in the 
foundry to stand together and we'll 
make 'em let you go." 

"But I don't want them to let 
me go! Can't you see.?" pleaded 
the boy. "I'm going to stick to the 
school and the school is going to 
stick to me, and by and by all of us 
and you too will be proud because 
I saw my chance and took it." 

"You're a kid. You don't know 
what you are talking about," the 
molder declared. "Apprentice 
schools are just traps of the bosses 
to make prisoners and slaves of 
fool boys. I know; I've watched. 
What 's any workingman got to-day 
but his right to be free to go on with 
his work just as his father did and 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 67 

to tell the rotten scheming bosses 
to stay where they belong?" 

"But, oh, Dave,'' the helper 
protested, "what they are going 
to teach me will do me ten times 
more good than ever it will them. 
It 's all right. Keep your hands off ! '' 

"And I — and I," stammered 
the molder, hardly more than a 
youngster himself, and yet with 
all the fierce doggedness of one in 
whom prejudice had obliterated 
vision — "I have been everything 
but a father to you. For my sake 
now, will you tear up those papers 
and tell them to go to hell.?'' 

The boy shook his head. "You 
dirty little traitor!" was Dave's 
good-bye. 

Larry Lukens began life anew 
with the customary lessons on a 
grinder, and knew that the world 
was moving when, a few days later. 



68 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

he was as busily teaching the grind- 
ing operation to one far greener 
than he. He moved from machine 
to machine, and one night he and 
his mother went over to call on 
Dave Womble's mother, so that 
the apprentice might explain to the 
incredulous and snorting molder 
that his soul was still his own and 
that the school was a mighty funny 
place; that several hundred boys 
were busy in it, and yet somehow, 
so far as he could see, just about 
everything and everybody there 
seemed to be for the purpose of 
helping him to learn. 



VI 

Yet Larry did not always reach 
out to help himself. 

"Lukens/' Trigger asked him 
one day, "why do I have trouble 
in getting you to use fixtures when 
they would hold the piece you are 
working on better than one of these 
loose sliding jigs?'' 

"Because I don't like fixtures/' 

" Lukens/ ' the superintendent 
whispered, "I'm going to tell you 
a secret. When I was your age I 
saw big ugly lobsters for the first 
time and I said, 'I'll never eat 
those things.' But I learned to do 
it, and would you believe it, now 
I can't ever get enough of them?" 

The confidential little story 
straightened out the boy on fix- 
tures. 

Larry had more than a few 



70 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

weeks of smooth running to his 
credit, in the classrooms as well as 
in the training shop, when he was 
able to pop into the foundry one 
day while the work was under way. 
Dave Womble was tamping sand 
and scolding a youthful helper — 
the second boy he had had since 
Larry forsook him. 

"Gee, it's nice to see the old 
sand boxes again," the apprentice 
said, embarrassed by the silent and 
motionless attitude the molder as- 
sumed as soon as he saw him. 

"Has it happened?'' Dave de- 
manded. 

"Has what happened.?" 

"Has it happened that you've 
found out their game and are 
ready to beg back onto your job 
with me?" 

"Oh, Dave, if you could only 
understand!" sighed the boy. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 71 

The husky molder set a harsh 
grasp on the apprentice's shoulder. 
"Kid," he hissed, "IVe felt sort 
of responsible for you since you 
were born. I keep changing boys 
on your job here so none can get an- 
chored and so you can come back 
if you ain't too big a fool, when 
you do get onto the game that's 
being run on you. You are mighty 
lucky to have it this way, but don't 
you try my patience too long!" 

The day came when Trigger 
asked a group of boys to spend an 
hour trying to imagine the kind of 
tool that would set a row of holes 
uniformly into a piece of metal of 
given shape and then for each to 
express his idea in a drawing. That 
evening Haliburton joined the 
superintendent and they studied 
the drawings with an eagerness 
that would have dumfounded the 



72 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

crude young draftsmen. The en- 
gineer and Trigger loved nothing 
better than testing for flashes of 
quaUty in the human material that 
was molding in their hands. 

"Look, chief," Trigger chuckled, 
and handed over one of the sheets. 
"The boy, Lukens, did this. We're 
building him into a tool-maker, 
you know.'' . 

Haliburton studied the indef- 
inite expression of a perfectly def- 
inite idea. 

"What we'll get," he predicted, 
"is a tool designer." 

At the end of the first year Dave 
Womble delivered himself thus to 
Larry: 

"You're lucky, kid, as I've said 
before; but they '11 bust you — just 
you wait ! " At the end of the second 
year he confided: "They're mov- 
ing, kid; your big bump is due 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 73 

pretty soon. I'll tell you how I 
know they are getting ready to 
spring things. Yesterday they 
asked if I would n't like to go on 
one of those crazy new electric 
tampers down in the other end of 
the foundry, and I told them ' Not 
much!' so quick it made their 
heads swim. They were thinking 
of the pay roll of course. I know 
just where I 'm going to hit the roll 
every week, but those electric- 
tamper fellers have got to go in 
and find out." 

Larry Lukens was entering his 
final year when Haliburton ob- 
served him watching a new boy 
induct a newer boy into the use of 
the grinder. As Larry's eyes took 
in the boys and their ponderous 
machine he started suddenly and 
his mouth opened. Haliburton 
moved noiselessly to his side. 



74 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

"What's in your mind, Larry?'' 
earnestly begged the engineer. 
"Tell me exactly what is in your 
mind." 

"It's funny I never noticed be- 
fore," replied the boy, "but I was 
just thinking that grinder is an 
awfully big and clumsy machine 
for the simple work it has to do." 

Haliburton fairly pounced on his 
pupil. 

"It is!" he exclaimed. "You bet 
it is! It's a bad machine. A grinder 
has no right to take up so much 
room and to require so much gear, 
now has it? I wish I had time to 
work out a much better machine. 
Say, Larry, can't — why can't you 
work one out yourself?" 

Larry Lukens looked hard at 
Haliburton. Illumination swept the 
daze out of his eyes. 

"I wouldn't have thought of 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 75 

tackling such a thing/' he answered, 
"but — but why should n't I have 
my try?'' 

In the engineering department 
of the school were boys whose high- 
school diplomas had qualified them 
for that course. Larry had always 
regarded them with reverence. 
Now he began to look on one of 
them with design. A week after 
he began day-and-night wrestling 
with his problem he had that 
embryo engineer eating lunch at 
his expense. With the pie he un- 
folded the plan for a new type of 
machine that had formed in his 
thought — a plan which needed 
engineering wisdom in the figuring 
of proportions and stress. 

''Say, boy!" the listener ejacu- 
lated. "You've gone and thought 
something, have n't you.?" 

A little later the daily lunch- 



76 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

time conference had enlarged to 
include an apprentice from the 
draftsman's course, who drew lines 
so rapidly under a double flow of 
inspiration that none of them had 
time for the trifling item of food. 

When his plans and specifica- 
tions were ready Larry was allowed 
to gather a construction crew of 
twenty from among the boys. Skill 
and enthusiasm for the undertak- 
ing were the necessary qualifica- 
tions. Before manufacture had 
passed the first stage the entire 
school was behind the project and 
the twenty builders found them- 
selves marked and envied men. 
The various parts seemed almost 
to leap into existence. When the 
assembling of them began the 
school was fairly aquiver. In the 
midst of the machinery that filled 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 77 

the great room there grew into be- 
ing a new grinder, capable, com- 
plete, compact, an ingenious sim- 
plification of the machine which 
up to that moment the machin- 
ery world had accepted as the 
best. 

A gong sounded at mid-after* 
noon and two hundred boys laid 
down their tools, brushed their hair, 
and assembled about the machine. 
They were near to bursting with 
excitement and silence. Superin- 
tendent Trigger handed a blank to 
Larry Lukens and the embarrassed 
hero set it against the emery wheel 
and gave his levers a pull. The wail 
of yielding steel was instantly 
drowned in a wordless roar. Pan- 
demonium reigned uninterruptedly 
for half an hour. Since time began 
a spasm of exultation has seized 
the human whenever inspiration 



78 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

has uplifted vision to lay hold 
upon some eternal how and why. 
Moreover, it was a boy's trium- 
phant vision this time, and it was 
boys who were hailing it with mad- 
dened tongues. 

There is some doubt as to 
whether Haliburton slept at all 
that night. He is suspected of hav- 
ing sat until dawn beside the new 
machine. It was something to be 
able at last to lay one's hand on 
concrete confirmation of a gospel 
one had preached so long. It was 
something to feel that throughout 
the years to come there would be 
found here a fount of assurance 
for every halting apprentice who 
took measure of the school — a 
magic talisman forever whispering 
that boys who put their hearts into 
developing their wings might hope 
to fly among the stars. 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 79 

Larry Lukens graduated and 
went hopping up the rungs of the 
ladder in a branch plant. To-day 
he is a general manager in a neigh- 
boring state. Every year he re- 
visits the school — has his big car 
swing in off the highway that leads 
to his summer camp in Maine. He 
greets Haliburton and Trigger and 
looks into their understanding eyes. 
Then he steps across to the foundry 
to visit one who was once almost a 
father to him. Dave Womble is still 
a hard-headed builder in sand. The 
old friends talk and then the mold- 
er follows the other man out to his 
waiting car. But Dave never sets 
foot on the running board, never 
lays a confident hand on the car's 
glistening door. There is n't a thing 
in his plant Lawrence W. Lukens 
would n't give Dave Womble for 
the asking, and there is n't a thing 



80 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

in the plant Dave Womble will 
ever ask him to give. Lukens might 
force matters, but he knows it 
would do no good. The reason is 
psychological. It is geometrical too. 
A round hole can afford no comfort 
to a peg or a head that glories in be- 
ing square. 



VII 

The school was a developer of 
stars; yet stars, Haliburton kept 
insisting, were the things that in- 
terested him least. Real star stuff 
would move upward naturally; it 
was the school's business to refine 
away the clods from prospects who 
seemed less certain to rise. His 
passion was turning out stars in 
the humble magnitudes. Great ma- 
chinists were as essential as great 
managers in pointing their fellows 
the way. He was developing vision 
and skill to go into the head and 
chest of the plant, and vision and 
skill to go into the organs too. 

The theory on which Haliburton 
built up the school was simple and 
comprehensive. First of all he 



82 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

recognized the impressive value 
on raw and plastic human material 
of utmost neatness, good order, 
dispatch, and discipline. He knew 
that atmosphere was a primary 
element in any scheme of creation. 
He dwelt on method and process 
in an effort to cultivate the creative 
point of view, teaching the use of 
tools in every detail, but keeping 
tools in their proper place as means 
to an end. He kept the apprentice's 
attention elevated beyond the thing 
immediately in hand to the point 
at which results were to be har- 
vested. He sought to inspire the 
love of diflBculty. 

Above everything else he wanted 
to see the youngster breaking orig- 
inal trails while working out his 
own salvation. 

Half a dozen years from the day 
the school started, the Universal 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 83 

had begun to feel its influence 
throughout the plant. Young men 
by the score and then by the hun- 
dred, trained as these had been 
trained, could not take their places 
in the shops without their presence 
becoming felt in an ever-increasing 
measure. First of all there was an 
incredible saving on the wear and 
tear of machines. Then production 
leaped ahead in the immediate 
neighborhood of every man from 
the school. It was the quick re- 
sponse to leadership. There was no 
more effort than before, just more 
intelligence. In spots, then through- 
out the plant, and finally through- 
out its country-wide business it 
brought home to the company that 
the apprentice school was an in- 
vestment that paid immeasurable 
dividends. 
The flight of the years brought 



84 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

nothing to suggest any correction 
in Haliburton's diagnosis of . the 
three things which the plant — 
and the whole of American indus- 
try — needed and must achieve. 
Industrial intelligence, skill, and 
loyalty were rock-bottom funda- 
mentals. He developed the first 
two — and then he challenged the 
worker who had become truly in- 
telligent and skilled to be disloyal 
if he could to his boss, to his fellow 
workers, or to his job! 

Four distinct phases made up 
the school's effort — to train young 
men for engineering and adminis- 
trative efficiency and leadership, 
for semi-professional service, for 
work demanding specialized me- 
chanical skill, and for all-round 
manual proficiency. No matter 
which course an apprentice fol- 
lowed he passed from liability to 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 85 

asset on the books of the company 
before he reached his graduation. 
He might or might not remain with 
the company after that time. 

"Look here!'' cried the general 
manager one day, when the school's 
graduates had begun to attract 
the covetous eyes of other em- 
ployers. "Don't you see that these 
other plants are stealing our young 
crackajacks away.?" 

"Let 'em!" was Haliburton's 
far-seeing reply. "Please observe 
that nearly every plant in the 
country has to have the kinds of 
goods we manufacture, and if our 
graduates are working in other 
plants, which brand of equipment 
are they going to demand shall be 
ordered for their use.? Why, the 
brand they have been trained to 
work with in the school — our 
brand, that they know all about!" 



86 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

So it proved. Whether a grad- 
uate went into the plant or went 
to work elsewhere, directly or indi- 
rectly he sent coin into the coffers 
of the company that had trained 
him. 

''I've been looking over the 
records of the past ten years," 
Trigger said to his chief one day, 
"to see what characteristics are 
common to the boys according to 
their nationalities." 

"What do you find.?" Halibur- 
ton asked. 

' ' Generally speaking, ' ' Trigger 
answered, "it is about like this: 
The Jewish boy is a wonder in 
mathematics. He can calculate any- 
thing, but he lacks precision and 
he lacks originality. With him any- 
thing is O.K. if it shines. The Ger- 
man boy is good in mathematics 
and fairly accurate, but he is slow 



( 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 87 

and he seldom has any initiative 
at all. The Irish boy has no great 
mechanical ability except in rare 
cases, but he is a great boss — 
especially when given the driving 
power over a bunch of his fellow 
Irish. The Swedish boy has the 
natural huskiness that makes him 
a good machine operator, but he 
won't think things out for himself 
— not if you will let him follow the 
leader. The English boy and the 
Scotch boy make good mechanics 
because they are resourceful and 
steady. The American lad is the 
king-pin. You can drop him out of 
a window head down and he will 
land on his feet. He has more than 
resourcefulness; he has ingenuity. 
You can flop him into the middle 
of any problem and he can work 
out of it if he will. The only thing 
against our native boy is that he is 



88 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

too likely to believe the world owes 
him a living." 

Haliburton laughed. "'I follow 
you," he said; ''but I accept no 
limitations on the score of birth. 
I want to give every boy an oppor- 
tunity to be better than his kind." 

The school came to be copied in 
other plants of the company and 
by outside concerns that longed for 
similar human fruitage of their 
own. The general manager made 
no secret of his tremendous pride. 
He called the school the best of its 
kind in the country. One day — 
it was in 1910 — he sat down on 
Haliburton's desk. 

"Aleck," he said, "we owe you 
something and you are going to get 
it. I want you to take a couple of 
months off and go breezing round 
Europe. Can you guess what I 
want you to do? They have been in 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 89 

the business of training apprentices 
a mighty long time over there, and 
I want you to absorb any great 
ideas they have so we can add 
them to our school. England and 
France have some schools of their 
own, but I suppose it is in effi- 
cient old Germany that you will 
find things to make your eyes 
shine/' 

In England Haliburton was re- 
ceived with interest. They made 
him lecture many times on the 
things they knew his school had 
done. It was lucky he spoke French, 
because when he went to Lyons he 
had countless, questions to answer. 
He went into Germany and for a 
while he seemed to have been 
swallowed up. 

It was two months later that a 
bulky form burst into Trigger's 
glass-walled room. 



90 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

^^Good Lord, what do you think 
has happened?" cried the G. M., 
his eyes popping and a letter flut- 
tering in his hand. " Those efiicieney 
sharps are holding Haliburton in 
Germany until he sets up schools 
just like this one in three of their 
biggest plants !'' 



VIII 

"Gentlemen, the man problem 
is the main problem in the United 
States to-day/' 

Alexander Haliburton was to 
have talked to the twelve manufac- 
turers about the mahogany table 
for thirty minutes, and now they 
had kept him talking on and on 
for an even two hours. Haliburton 
was no orator, but he was an en- 
gineer with a knack for rearing 
imposing structures upon a sub- 
stantial foundation of facts. The 
dozen big men were not looking at 
Haliburton particularly but they 
were missing nothing of the things 
he set irresistibly before their kin- 
dling eyes. 

''Three hundred thousand man- 
ufacturing establishments in the 



92 ACES FOR INDUSTRY 

United States/' the speaker con- 
tinued. "This means that the great 
mass of America's youth is and 
must be absorbed into our indus- 
trial plants. It is the best mind and 
the best muscle in existence. What 
are you going to do to fit it to 
answer the imperative demand of 
a world?'' 

There was a sudden shuffling 
of mahogany chair legs upon the 
polished floor. Shetling, the im- 
promptu chairman, came stanchly 
to his feet. 

"Mr. Haliburton," he rumbled, 
"you've shattered all our precious 
theories with the thunder and 
lightning of your experience. We 
have fewer problems than when 
you began this memorable illumi- 
nation; but you, sir, have more. I 
take it that in the next ten minutes 
you will be called upon to establish 



ACES FOR INDUSTRY 93 

twelve apprentice schools in twelve 
plants simultaneously, and before 
very long perhaps much of manu- 
facturing America will have opened 
its eyes and will be shouting des- 
perately for your help.'' 



THE END 



I 



CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS 
U . S . A 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proces- 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2003 

PreservationTechnologief 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESER^TIO^ 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 





010 989 291 9 



